Down From the Stratosphere, Gaga-Free

As if to tune out the futurists and the sportswear revivalists, and maybe have a little more fun, designers are fluffing hair, adding giant orchids and evoking the heady mauve warmth of an Antonio Lopez drawing.

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MARC JACOBS Wide-leg trousers with a striped knit top.Credit
Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

The mood announced itself on Sunday with Tom Ford’s ultra-glamorous show, the style a blend of 1920s lines and Paris smoke. Then, on Monday night, Marc Jacobs returned to the ’70s, sending out rose satin pantsuits with wide-leg trousers, zigzag knits and cotton peasant blouses with full sleeves that recalled Saint Laurent.

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MARC JACOBS A silk-satin pantsuit with corsage.Credit
Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

Mr. Jacobs’s fidelity to the ’70s and to a handful of worldly, out-dancing-all-night women — one of whom, Diane Von Furstenberg, sat in his front row — doesn’t leave him much room for surprise, and this was not a collection that made people rush backstage in a drool. On the other hand, the clothes and colors put you in a good mood, and maybe that’s the draw for a fashion gypsy like Mr. Jacobs.

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RODARTE Cropped high-waist paints and a plaid shirt.Credit
Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

We’re so used to the dead whites and galactic silvers of Lady Gaga and future-minded designers that to see a palette of mauve, rose, pink, tan, purple and terra cotta — sometimes in a mix of three or four colors — made you want something more earthbound. Indeed, for all the glamorous associations of a silk peasant blouse, or a one-shoulder dress in sheer, swirling stripes, or a turned-back-brim straw hat and a corsage, this particular dress-up aesthetic is strangely touching — perhaps because it involves a sense of play.

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HALSTON Beaded one-shoulder gowns and silk tunics.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

In its own raw, sensual way, Donna Karan’s collection of sand-colored dresses and crinkled safari jackets speaks to a similar desire. Most of the silk crepe or satin dresses are of the romantic ’30s type favored by John Galliano, with flutters and trails of fabric, and, alas, only for young women.

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DONNA KARAN A crinkled safari jacket with a long silk skirt.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Ms. Karan’s other idea was a jacket, worn with a long silk skirt, that looked shrunken, creating many ripples, somewhat lumpy pockets and the kind of organic texture she is crazy about. But it was a repetitive show, the concepts not really new, and there is a limit to the appeal of sand, especially when you’re stuck in it.

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VERA WANG A pleated tulle dress with a train.Credit
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Now that Marios Schwab has a handle on Halston, and Sarah Jessica Parker is monitoring the lower-priced Heritage line, maybe the higher-ups should give Mr. Schwab a runway show. Ordinarily still-life presentations have the advantage of an up-close look, but this time the pleasure was spoiled by a mob of people.

Still, Mr. Schwab, who has his own label in London, conveyed Halston’s glamour, with one-shoulder columns in night-sky cluster patterns, halter looks in white and orange, and a lovely short dress in white silk with a high neck, a gold-clasp belt and long, vented sleeves. The dresses had a contemporary feel, but without new, beefy ideas for day, the label might remain passively vintage.

If a Quentin Tarantino film is a reference point, as “Kill Bill” was for Vera Wang, you expect a highly stylized gesture or two. But this collection, which included fusions of origami pleating and gym shorts, was starkly dry of imagination as Ms. Wang repeated what seemed to be the same Japanese floral print and a ruched tulle dress with a long streamer. There was much tweaking of silk and jersey to very little purpose. The fabric went this way and that way, then the fabric changed and —

It went another way.

Can the notion of home be an influence? And can it be an influence without its inducing nostalgia or banal references to Mom’s closet? The clothes that Kate and Laura Mulleavy did this season for Rodarte were striking in their emotional grip of the things — almost all in nature — that the sisters see in their native California.

Now, lots of designers purportedly see things, but the results are too often literal, when it’s the fine essence we truly crave. This collection felt like the California experience that I’ve wanted the sisters to tell me — the homey texture and cut of a high-waist pair of trousers worn with a long-sleeve lumberjack plaid, the wood tones of a striped skirt worn blanket-style with an open-shoulder cotton blouse in a blue Chinese porcelain pattern.

The collection also worked on a commercial level, thanks to the excellent striped jackets with cutout shoulders and the fact that the fabrics didn’t overwhelm the designs. In the past, the designs, such as they were, seemed to accommodate the novel materials. But, with this collection, I suspect that people will look at it again and again in a kind of amazement at so much transmitted feeling through honest things. At least I hope so.

A version of this review appears in print on September 15, 2010, on page A32 of the New York edition with the headline: Down From the Stratosphere, Gaga-Free. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe